Author: victorhanson

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall semester courses in military history and classical culture.

Eeyore’ Corner: Trumpistics

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Victor Davis Hanson // VDH’s Blade of Perseus

Part One: Trump, RIP?

In January-February 2021, Trump’s future was problematic. He was kicked off social media. And without his accustomed megaphones, Trump for the first time in years was unable to reach supporters and the public at large. Thus, the hate-Trump media filled the void and alone took over most of Trump’s ability to communicate. 

Following January 6, the insurgent Parler, surging with millions of new subscribers, was ambushed by Amazon, Apple, and Google, which, in Night-of-the-Long-Knives fashion, removed it from their apps and links.

Note that Trump’s strongest traditional media supporters were no more. Rush Limbaugh, at his peak in terms of analysis and fired-up resistance to socialism, passed away on February 17, after a year-long and heroic fight against cancer. 

Continue reading “Eeyore’ Corner: Trumpistics” →

Vaccination Weaponization

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Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness

It was always going to be Herculean to inoculate, with an untried vaccine, a multi-ethnic nation of 330 million, across a vast continent—in an era when the media routinely warps the daily news. 

Some minorities understandably harbored distrust of prior government vaccination programs. 

Nearly 40 million foreign residents in America are from countries where corrupt governments had long ago lost the trust of the population. 

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Optimism, Inc.: The Crushing Weight of Lies

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Victor Davis Hanson // VDH’s Blade of Perseus

One reason why I remain optimistic about the impending end of wokism and the failure of the cultural revolution is that the dangers they pose are unsustainable. And by that I mean that they require such dissimulation, that the load of lies eventually will snap the spine of those asked to carry and disseminate them. 

Star Trek’s John Gill

Joe Biden last week gave a series of speeches, answers and riffs that were nonsensical. By that I don’t just mean that he has no clue about how to arrest inflation, or the dangers of a spiraling violent crime rate or of an open border. 

The problem is that he increasingly cannot finish a sentence and at times seems entirely incoherent. And the media, the Left, and the Democratic party—all once so eager to seek Trump’s removal as unhinged, and all but forced to take the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, or the target of a supposedly wired-up Rod Rosenstein, or diagnosed in absentia as nuts by Yale Professor Bandy Lee—seem determined to hide, but cannot, the all too obvious truth.

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Incompetence + Arrogance = Woke

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Outrage mob and cancel culture symbol or cultural cancellation and social media censorship as canceling or restricting opinions that are offensive to the public with 3D illustration elements.

Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness

We know the nature of mass hysterias in history, and how they can overwhelm and paralyze what seem to be stable societies.  

We know the roots and origins of the cult of wokeness.  

And we know, too, how such insanity—from the Salem witch trials to Jacobinism to McCarthyism—can spread, despite alienating most of the population, through fear and the threat of personal ruin or worse. These are the dark sides of the tulip, hula-hoop, and pet-rock fads, the mass obsessions so suited to past affluent Western societies.  

But does wokeism serve another purpose as well? Specifically, does it either hide preexisting incompetence or fuel it? 

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What Is Woke Really About?

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Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness

Most Americans were as indifferent to the unexpected loss of our Olympic women’s soccer team as they were once excited about their World Cup win. 

In between was the team’s nonstop politicking, from whining about compensation to virtue signaling their disrespect for the United States. The celebrity face of the team, perennial scold Megan Rapinoe, is going the way of teenage grouch Greta Thunberg—becoming more pinched and scowling the more she is tuned out.

BLM co-founder and self-avowed Marxist Patrisse Marie Khan-Cullors Brignac used her corporate grifting to buy four homes. The last in Topanga Canyon, surrounded by a new $35,000 security fence. 

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